Hard Questions….they might be easy to ask but difficult to answer
I’ve been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book entitled “The Cost of Discipleship” and although only on chapter five of the 32 chapter book have already found some difficult questions I need to examine in my life.
Question 1: How many times have I place stipulations on following Christ in what he commands me to do?
“As they were walking along the road, a man said to him (Jesus), ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ He said to another man, ‘Follow me.’ But he replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Still another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.’ Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God’.” – Luke 9:57-62
I think this stipulation thing is best pulled from the third would be disciple: “I will follow you, Lord; but first….” I think there are several instances I’ve done this in my own life: “I’ll go wherever You want me but first I want to….” “I know You want me to do….but I want to try….” This thinking goes on and on but Bonhoeffer makes a valid point when we try to make stipulations to God.
“But then discipleship is no longer discipleship, but a programme of our own to be arranged to suit ourselves, and to be judged in accordance with the standards or a rational ethic……By making his offer on his own terms, he alters the whole position, for discipleship can tolerate no conditions which might come between Jesus and our obedience to him.”
Question 2: Am I relying on Christ’s Word alone and not in the “securities” of this world?
This is a huge question that I’m sure every believer grapples with. Another way of rephrasing would be how we can live in the world but not be of it. This is a super hard especially with uncertainities I have right now in my life…but the Bible shows countless examples of people who were uncertain about things yet God took care of them: God telling Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, Moses leading the people out of Egypt despite being a poor speaker, Paul being called on the Damascus Road although he persecuted Jesus followers at the time, Barnabas coming to Paul and sharing with him even when he was uncertain he would have a life….just to name a few.
I think worry is one of the easiest things satan uses when trying to counteract what God is doing in our lives. For example, a couple weeks ago at REvive I really felt in the presence of God, sitting in the throne room, singing face to face with my Creator…an awesome moment cannot begin to describe what God did that night. I went to sleep with huge amount of joy and peace, woke up desiring more time than I had to spend in the Word and headed off to work. Unfortunately at work I began worrying about “important,” but really trivial things in the grand scope of things: my job, finances, etc. God knows we’ll worry about things but it’s clear in Scripture that He’ll be there and provide.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you-you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matthew 6:25-34
~Am I being obedient with what I’m doing, where I am, who I am? Is God telling me to do something or move someplace and I’m not listening? Am I disobeying where I am?
This is a pretty hard question for me to ask yet alone answer, especially the where one. I’m at the stage in my life where relationships are changing. Friends I’ve grown up with are marrying and moving away. My younger sister and brother-in-law might be moving as well and here I am, settled back in St. Louis wondering “Is this where I should be?”
God wants me here; not sure the length of my time, but I’m seeing God use me to reach out to people: at work, at Brookshire, in the college ministry….God is using me. The one thing I don’t want to happen is that if God calls me somewhere else or to do something else that I’ll not take notice…that I’ll be distracted and won’t listen…that I’ll be disobedient in staying where I am.
Another thing I don’t want to happen is to hop on a bandwagon thinking God wants me to move, to change jobs, to get involved with a new ministry when that’s not what He wants for me. I don’t want to overstep and run ahead of God. I want to continually be able to say that I’m doing what I know God wants me to do and not simply do out of feeling I have to….I desire to follow God where He leads, I just need to remind myself that God might use things not in my own line of sight.
3. Is Jesus Christ my exclusive allegiance?
I think that this question kind of ties the other two together. If Jesus Christ is the one I give allegiance to I won’t be worried of the what if’s that consistently try to get me to lose focus. If Jesus Christ the one I give allegiance to I won’t have to ask “Am I obeying” because I will know that His Word is what goes and that I have a desire to follow Him.
I hope that through this post you might begin to ask these same questions. I know that they’re hard, but I think that when you have muddled with answers it might help shed some light on what God wants of you and what’s the next step in your relationship with Him.
